“Michael,” she said, pulling back, embarrassed. Her breasts were bigger than the last time he saw her, an unremovable costume, surgically altered in the now old-fashioned way, with tiny visible scars under each. She leaned back from him, tearing again, ashamed.
“Lorene, scars don’t scare me,” he said, and that must have been true because he had many, many tiny crescent scars on his arms and chest. He reached for her again, and leaned to kiss her nipples and her tiny belly. She was then back, falling under his touch, and kissing his body. Their touching became more urgent and heated. She was finding familiar places in hisbody — the way his shoulders felt, the muscles in his arm as he stroked her between her thighs. He had not forgotten how she was to be got at, gently but firmly and steadily, sideways almost, until she felt her body reach an almost impossible edge, and he slowed his touch even more, elongating the moment until she felt a sheet of horizontal pleasure slide out to the farthest points of her body and then resolve in a deep shudder. She lingered in it, shaking through her climax, and he kept pressing her gently, even more minutely, more tiny-ly until from somewhere far off another wave of shudders came, until she was crying from it. Her tears flowed and he kissed her longer and harder.
After they had stopped, as they lay entwined, she still cried softly.
“It’s OK, Lori,” he said, and he let her cry on his chest. She didn’t resist, and she couldn’t stop, it was a long-coming release.
“I remember when I used to be able to make you laugh,” he said. She started to smile then, but still she was crying.
“You do make me laugh. I remember that, too.”
“Lorene—” he said, and she took some breaths and calmed down.
“Lorene.”
“What, Michael?” and she looked up at him, his face in profile. He just closed his eyes, smiling slightly, shaking his head.
“What, what are you going to tell me now? That you’re crazy? That you can’t function? That your obsessions overwhelm reality, that you can’t bear the world, or me, or anything but your own four walls in this hospital?”
He opened his eyes and turned his face toward her.
“Uh, no. I was going to tell you that my arm is falling asleep and it’s going to go numb if I don’t move it out from underwhere you are resting your head and shoulders. Not right away, mind you, but soon.” She laughed and lifted her head from his chest and looked at him.
“See, I’ve got you laughing now.”
“Yeah.”
He closed his eyes again, back on the pillow.
“It’s very good right now, but it’s not always so easy.”
She closed her eyes to listen to him.
“Right now, yes, is great. But I have so much trouble.”
“What do they say is wrong?”
“I am. . I find comfort in small, orderly, controllable things.”
“Do they give it a name?”
“There is an anxiety that overwhelms me, and concentration is the only—” Michael stopped and shook his head.
“What do your doctors say it is?”
“C’mon, Lorene. What do you want to hear — Neotraumatic Stress Disorder. Nonspecific Anxiety Dysthymia. Bilateral Well-Being Deficiency Disorder. Pseudoautistic Hypermimetic Compulsion. Disassociative Dystopia Anticipation Paranoia.” Michael looked at the wall and drummed his fingers. He nearly smiled as he spoke. “Malicious Malingering Syndrome.” He glanced at Lorene, then looked away.
“Metallic, endless, vacant thoughts drained of everything but static—” Michael stopped abruptly and stared at his hand.
Lorene opened her eyes and looked at the stacks of papers in the room.
“But here, in this protected place, even with me here, in this place, you’re OK.”
“It’s fleeting. I can already feel things edging in. And this is on a really good day.”
“You don’t feel good?” she asked.
“It will take me weeks to recover. I can’t do this with you.”
“But we already did.”
“We can’t do this again. You have to understand, Lorene.” He was no longer looking at her, but staring at his hand. His fingers drummed the wall. Lorene sat up, leaned against the wall. She wanted to edge into his sight.
“You have no faith in me. I am strong, I can handle anything. I can take it.”
He smiled, and then he looked away from the wall and looked at her directly. He shook his head.
“You’re always looking for the grand sacrifice, the salvation, the thing to give yourself over to. But I’m not built for these things. It’s me. I’ve lost faith in the world as a place I can reliably inhabit. It takes so much energy — so many possible interpretations. No way to distinguish one from the other. A paralysis, an ambivalence ensues. You’re perfect. You have such overwhelming certainty and confidence. But me? I just can’t.”
“Can I stay a bit longer?”
“I like small, orderly things I can contain. That I can hold completely in my head, with an order and an end.”
He was driving with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding his coffee. She offered to hold his cup for him, but he waved her off. The kids lay low in the narrow backseat of the truck. Lisa hated it, it wasn’t safe for kids their age, but they had no choice. Mark kept spilling coffee on his thick fingers, and then when he took a sip of the hot liquid, some of it spilled on his shirt.
“Goddamn too much to expect a peaceful cup of coffee on a Sunday morning.” He rolled down his window and tossed outthe rest of the coffee. Then he tossed the cup in the foot well on Lisa’s side, where she watched it roll out of sight and clink next to two other cups already under the seat.
Lisa went over her shopping list.
“You know I only got thirty hours last week.”
She nodded and looked at him. He still had one hand on the steering wheel. The other hand put a cigarette in his mouth and snapped his lighter open, lighting it. He squinted at the dash, half from the noon-bright sun they now faced, and half from the smoke that curled out of his mouth. Lisa opened her window. Glanced at the cigarette and then in the backseat at the kids. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. She found most things Mark did were bad for the kids to see or hear or have any proximity to. He had learned this by now. She went back to her list, whittling it down to its bare minimum.
“We can’t get much. We are already late on rent and the phone and the electric bill will come Monday,” he said.
“I’ve got nine hours’ cleaning money coming.” He didn’t look at her.
“Oh, well, that’s a relief. Let’s see, that’s what? A hundred and ten bucks? And then you gotta give Brenshaw some money to baby-sit, and that leaves about fifty bucks. No, Lisa.”
“Mrs. Brenshaw doesn’t care if I pay her anything. I just do some shopping for her and go to the post office. I help her cook. That’s all.”
Mark looked at her and then tossed his cigarette. He put a hand on her plump knee. She had gotten very heavy since the twins, and she’d taken to baggy sweatshirts and jeans. Her hair was pulled back, and she seldom wore lipstick or even earrings. Still, she was smooth-cheeked and young. He held her knee for a moment.